Smoking bans spreading in North County - Encinitas, Carlsbad are latest to investigate ordinances

NORTH COUNTY - At its beaches and parks, North County is
becoming a tough place to be a smoker.

Municipal smoking bans are accumulating like butts in an ashtray
and now exist in half a dozen cities in the region from Del Mar to
Oceanside to Poway.

On the vanguard of such bans was little Solana Beach, a town
that made national headlines in 2003 as the first city in the
country to outlaw smoking on its shoreline.

City leaders cited the dangers of secondhand smoke and the
number of butts left strewn across the sand as reasons for the
ordinance.

Last week, the Encinitas City Council moved toward enacting a
similar beach ban, and the Carlsbad City Council told its staff to
return with information about smoking policies in other cities.

The spread of such no-smoking laws has encountered little
opposition in North County, but groups have formed elsewhere to
trumpet smokers' rights.

A leader of one such group said Friday that municipal
governments were taking their anti-smoking crusade too far.

"It's not the cities' or the state's job to legislate how we
live our lives," said Robert Best, who lives in Ventura and is the
California representative for a group called The Freedom
Alliance.

"We're not banning food on parks and beaches because of a
littering problem," he said. "We're only banning smoking because
smoking is not popular right now."

Trail blazer

Teens were the driving force behind the smoking ban on beaches
in Solana Beach. The Youth Tobacco Prevention Corps, a division of
the San Dieguito Alliance for Drug-Free Youth, lobbied the council
in 2003 to enact a ban.

"We started the wave (of beach smoking bans)," Candice Porter,
the teens' adult adviser, said last week. "I don't know how many
beaches and parks are smoke-free now, but it's a lot."

In approaching city leaders, the teens said secondhand smoke
presented health risks and that litter from cigarette butts
endangered children and wildlife and fouled the beaches.

As evidence, they showed City Council members what the teens
dubbed the "butt tub" - a plastic bin containing 6,437 butts
collected by 30 people during one hour at Moonlight Beach.

Today, signs in Solana Beach tell visitors that smoking is
off-limits on city beaches, and for the most part, people appear to
have complied.

According to the county Sheriff's Department, one citation was
issued, in 2006, to a person who violated the smoking ban.

Del Mar

In 2006, Del Mar council members banned beach smoking, joining
their peers in Solana Beach. Nearly 20 years before that, Del Mar
voters rejected a 1987 ballot initiative that attempted to ban
public smoking. The measure drew international attention.

Like the move in Solana Beach, Del Mar's ban came at the request
of the Youth Tobacco Prevention Corps.

The ban in Del Mar includes parks, beaches, sea walls and
adjacent sidewalks, stairs and street ends. Outdoor smoking in
restaurants may not exceed 50 percent of the outdoor seating
area.

Del Mar officials say they rely largely upon an honor system to
enforce the ban.

Up the coast

In April, Oceanside, North County's largest coastal city, banned
smoking at beaches, parks and on the Oceanside Municipal Pier.

The smoking ordinance in Oceanside, which also relies mostly on
self-policing for enforcement, does not apply to golf courses or
the pierside band shell.

The official debate among city leaders hinged on public health
and safety versus big government.

"Are we going to be a nanny for everyone?" Councilman Jerry Kern
asked his colleagues earlier this year, before casting the lone
vote against the ban. During his remarks, Kern raised a cigar,
which he said he smokes during Sunday walks on the beach.

"This is sacred to me," Kern said.

Like Kern, local activist Jimmy Knott III found himself in the
minority as he spoke against the ban.

"I believe this is a step too far," Knott said at the meeting.
"It takes away freedoms and rights of individuals."

Coastal holdouts

Armed with a victory in Solana Beach, the Youth Tobacco
Prevention Corps lobbied the Encinitas City Council in 2004 to
enact a beach smoking ban.

After all, the teens had filled that butt tub at Moonlight
Beach, which is in Encinitas and is one of the busiest beaches in
the county.

But the council majority refused to entertain a ban until last
week, when a unanimous vote directed the city attorney to draft an
ordinance that would prohibit smoking at beaches, parks, trails and
outdoor dining areas.

Also last week, the Carlsbad City Council debated a potential
smoking ban during a city workshop. Council members - some of them
worried that their beaches would be the last place to smoke legally
on North County's shoreline - directed their staff to outline the
smoking policies of other cities in a report.

"Apparently, we're the last one to consider a smoking ban,"
Councilman Mark Packard said.

City and county

Smoke a cigarette at beaches, parks and city-owned golf courses
in San Diego and risk fines up to $1,000. Since August of 2006,
that's been the law.

San Diego's city limits extend well into North County, including
an extensive park system in Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Penasquitos,
Carmel Mountain Ranch and Carmel Valley.

The smoking ban also applies to Qualcomm Stadium, where in
August, at the San Diego Chargers' opening day game, 255 people
were ejected for smoking. Among them, 105 were arrested.

Months before the city smoking ban took place, the county Board
of Supervisors approved banning smoking in the county's 40,000
acres of parks and 300 miles of hiking trails.

Bill Horn, who represents inland North County, cast the lone
vote against the ban, saying it was an "intrusion on personal
liberties."

Inland action

As of last spring, smoking became illegal on trails and in parks
in Poway. That city's staff brought forward issues that, in large
part, echoed those of coastal cities: that smoking is a fire
hazard, threatens public health and creates litter. They added that
cigarette butts are the most common form of trash picked up in
parks and on trails.

While other cities of inland North County have not enacted
specific smoking bans of their own, Vista and Escondido have built
upon smoking restrictions contained in state law.

California outlawed smoking in bars and restaurants in 1998,
extending a statewide workplace smoking ban that took effect
1994.

State laws also prohibit smoking within 20 feet of the doors and
operable windows of public buildings and within 25 feet of
playgrounds. Vista extended that smoking ban to within 35 feet of
doors and operable windows of public buildings; Escondido's
prohibition extends to 80 feet.